So after leaving the Great Gift Wrap Up, I headed towards Rincon.
I made my reservation last week. They were very full for Saturday night, and said that all that was left were two smoking rooms in the Spa Tower. I hate the Spa Tower because of the terrible construction noise. I also will not stay in a smoking room, since I'm a non-smoker. I couldn't believe that the entire property was sold out a week in advance, aside from two smoking rooms. I wanted to get on a waiting list, but the host said no such thing existed. He then put me on hold to get his supervisor, but in the time I was on hold, they found a Garden Tower room (non-smoking) and booked me for Saturday night.
Knowing I would be in very late, I asked how I could assure they wouldn't give away my room. I was told to call in before midnight if I couldn't make it by then, but that my room would be held until 11:59pm. I was satisfied with that answer, though still a little suspicious that I might lose my room anyway.
On Saturday night, I left Vegas at about 11:15pm. It is 290 miles to the Rincon.
I called while on the road at about 11:30-11:45. The girl at the front desk was acting very sketchy. I told her I would be in between 3:00 and 3:30. She kept saying, "I'll note your account that you want a Garden Tower room", but I kept responded that I didn't want notes -- I wanted the room held. She then gave me a variety of excuses:
"My system is down, I'll have to go over to the other system after we get off the phone and note it." (I already said I didn't want it just noted!)
"We're not sure if the room will be clean by then."
"We'll try to have it ready for you. I'll note your reservation with the request."
After hearing "I'll note your reservation" for like the 5th time, I finally got angry.
"You're not making any sense," I told her. "I keep trying to tell you that I want my room held, and you keep answering me that you'll note the reservation. Then you tell me some weird story that it might not be clean in time, even though we're talking about over 3 hours from now. I want a direct answer. Can you guarantee that I will have my Garden Tower room ready when I arrive?"
"Umm.... no, I can't," she said, without elaborating. "But we'll try."
I told her that wasn't acceptable. She told me she would go tell her supervisor and have them get on the phone with me to solve this.
Keep in mind that, in addition to being a Seven Stars member, I have racked up $150,000 in video poker coin-in since November at this property.
I was left on hold for 15 minutes without her returning. Finally, I hung up.
I called back, asked for the front desk, and a different person answered. They asked me to hold.
"I already held for 15 minutes waiting for someone else here to get the supervisor," I protested.
"I'm with a customer," he replied. "Please hold until I'm done."
Again, I was back on hold, and another 15 minutes passed!
I hung up again, and asked for a host.
The host on duty came on the phone, and broke the bad news to me.
"The reason they're acting like this at the front desk is because they gave away your room, and they're trying to avoid telling you that," he said.
At first the host tried to semi-justify it by saying "Room requests are never guaranteed, it's in the fine print", but I responded angrily and said that I would never return to the property if they couldn't manage to hold a standard Garden Tower room for me without giving it away, especially given a week's notice and a standing reservation. He quickly backed down and agreed that it was mishandled, and that the front desk's actions with putting me on hold (as well as lying to me) were unacceptable.
He then went to the front desk himself, and told them at least to make sure that I would get a non-smoking room. He called me back and said that he informed them to block off a non-smoking Spa Tower room for me, and to give me a Garden Tower one if somehow a checkout occurred before I arrived.
I reluctantly accepted this but told him how disappointed I was, and that this might be my last Rincon visit as a result.
I got to Rincon at 3:15 and went to the front desk. The guy at the desk said, "Sorry, your reservation was changed to today because it's after midnight, and we don't allow check-ins for same day before 4am. Please come back in 45 minutes."
WHAT?!
The other front desk rep, realizing that I was the guy the host had just talked about, quickly interrupted, and said, "Sorry, you don't have to wait. You can check in now."
Then I got a bit of good news: A Garden Tower room had opened up.
As check-in was finished, I asked, "How do I ensure this doesn't happen again, where they give away my room?"
"You can't. You're always taking that chance if you arrive late at night," both front desk reps told me.
I couldn't believe this. Is it really that hard to guarantee a freaking standard Garden Tower room for a Seven Stars member with an advance reservation?!
I then played some video poker (2500 tier credits) before 6am. I hit quad 8s and quad Js for $625 each, but didn't hit anything else of note. I lost $625.
I talked to the head host on property today about what happened, and he apologized. He told me to contact him personally next time I come, and would see to it that my room is always blocked off. He said that the lies, the hold time, and the insistence that there was no way to block a room were troubling to him. He lamented that the front desk had already caused a lot of headache for him when trying to keep his Seven Stars customers happy. He asked for me to talk to the hotel manager and explain everything, "so she can have an idea of what's going on, so this crap can finally stop happening to people."
I did just that later in the day. She profusely apologized, said she was new, and was "in the process of changing some unacceptable behaviors around here, this being one of them."
I played WSOP Circuit event #4 at 2pm. The buyin was $365. I assumed it was something like $330+35, but it was actually $300+65. Awful! That's over 20% rake! Had I known that, I wouldn't have played. I got aces cracked once by a straight flush on the river, and my AK raced against TT and lost on a flop KTx, so I was out after less than 3 hours. They only got 138 people, but despite that, they made us play 10 handed with a ton of open tables in the room. Terrible all around.
I then returned to play video poker. They were having a "Drop Into Cash" promotion, where you earn one entry per 10 tier credits. The place didn't look that crowded, so I figured I might as well play now and earn my 250 entries. The drawings were happening hourly, ending at 7.
I got off to a terrible start on video poker, losing $1200 straight, and hadn't even accumulated 200 tiers yet. This was similar to my start the night before.
Then I saw something beautiful:
I was dealt four aces right off the bat. $2000 right there, and I'm back in the black.
Just a short time later, I held two 4s, and got this:
Then, as the 6pm hour hit, I held JdKdTd9d, and got the one-outer:
This is the 2nd one-card straight flush draw I've made this year, but I've never hit a Royal.
As the hand-pay music went on, I heard this:
"And our 5th and final contestant for the 6pm hour.... Todd Witteles!"
I had to ask them to delay the handpay, as I had just 10 minutes to get over to the Promo desk to do the contest.
Basically, you win between $150 and $1500 in freeplay or cash. You drop a disk and it lands in one of 9 slots. The slot indicates your prize, either $50, $100, $150, $300, or $500. The $500 is cash, the $100 is cash, and the other 3 are freeplay. There is only one $500 slot, and two of all the others. Ignoring the difference between cash and freeplay, you will average $170 on each drop. You get 3 disks, so the average win will be $510.
I got $50 on my first (just bumped off the $500), $150 on my second, and $300 on my third. This gave me $500 in freeplay, as close to average as you can get.
I went back and finished out my VP.
At one point I hit a really bad slump where I lost $700 straight without even hitting 2 pair. However, I got quad 7s twice in a short period of time:
I noticed that, when I ran the freeplay, it didn't show tiers accumulating. This disappointed me, as it meant that the $500 in freeplay wasn't as good as an actual $500 to me (since I was playing for tiers anyway, but now I had to do it separately). The freeplay yielded $375.
Oddly enough, when I quit with supposedly 2500 tiers, it showed I had 2550 total, so I guess the freeplay did count, even though it didn't "count up" on the screen. Weird.
Overall I finished up $3300 for the day in VP. This meant I lost $2200 on the full-house-or-worse hands, which is about standard in my experience.
Unfortunately I am also in a lot of pain, because I am having a complication from a recent dental procedure, so I am going to get out of here and make an emergency visit to the dentist on Monday.
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